The Quiz Blogger

This blog burrows deep into the British quiz scene and sometimes even the wider world, the myriad facts that are used to power it, and everything else under the trivia sun.

Friday, December 23, 2016

BH: The Return: For the 167th time

BH167: cor, this is bloody hard work...

.... no wonder I never post anything. It's all just an exhausting faff. But then again, what isn't?

(I just felt like posting some questions.)

1 Which former Bolivian president (1825-28) was assassinated in an ambush at Berruecos on June 4, 1830?

2 Which no.1 single by Will Smith features a sample of the 1982 song Forget Me Nots by Patrice Rushen ("Sending you forget me nots / To help me to remember")?

3 Which two-time WWE Champion, mixed martial artist and current UFC fighter (b.1978), whose real name is Phil Brooks, lost his first professional fight (against Mickey Gall) at UFC 203 in September 2016?

4 In the late 9th century, at Weissenburg (later Wissembourg) Abbey, which Benedictine monk composed a gospel harmony that is consideredthe first substantial work of verse in German? Written in rhyming couplets (7104 couplets), it is now called the Evangelienbuch, which is the first use of rhyme in German literature. He is the first German poet whose name we known from his work.

5 Which West German author (1914-79) developed his theory of etyms in his gargantuan magnum opus Zettels Traum (1979), a 1334-page novel inspired by Finnegans Wake?

7 Due to become a 2018 Steven Spielberg film, Ready Player One is a sci-fi novel by which US writer?

8 Which Argentine director (1914-81) was mostly known for his sexploitation films in the 1960s and 1970s starring his favourite actress and romantic partner, sex symbol Isabel Sarli - his works include the first naked scene in an Argentine film (El Trueno entre las hojas), while his namesake grandson Armando won an Oscar for co-writing the film Birdman?

9 Which king of Sicily (1095-1154) succeeded in uniting all the Norman conquests in Italy into one kingdom with a strong centralized government?

10 Co-founder of Fontshop, which German typographer (b.1947) designed the FF Meta and Nokia Sans typefaces?

11 Which Dynamo Kiev player scored a hat trick in the USSR's 4-3 defeat by Belgium in the round-of-16 at the 1986 World Cup?

12 What is the only grape used to make the red wine Brunello di Montalcino?

13 Jeringonza is a Spanish language game that involves doing what?

14 Along with Kirch Kiraly (USA), which two-time Italian world champion (1990 & '94) was named the 'Greatest [male] Volleyball Player of the Century' by the FIVB?

15 Which 1878-80 series of foreign policy speeches given by Gladstone, the Liberal Party leader, is often cited as the first modern political campaign?

16 The Will Rogers phenomenon is obtained when moving one element from one set to another set has what effect?

17 Welsh football legend John Charles said of which Italian brand (founded in the old Lazzarini cobbler's shop in Ascoli Piceno): "these are not football boots, they are golden slippers"?

18 Nicknamed Juanga and El Divo de Juarez, which iconic, flamboyant Mexican singer (1950-2016) sold over 100 million copies worldwide, his 18th studio album, Recuerdos, Vol. II, being the best-selling album of all time in Mexico with over 8m copies sold? He wrote some 1,800 songs, including Hasta Que Te Conoci,El Noa Noa, No Tengo Dinero, Abrazame Muy Fuerte and De Mi Enamorate.

19 Which 2016 video game, the debut title for Hangar 13, is set in 1968 in the city of New Bordeaux (a fictional redo of New Orleans) and centres on orphan/Vietnam War vet Lincoln Clay?

20 Which Argentine composer's reworking of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, used as the theme on the radio quiz Brain of Brain, was described by Robert Robinson as "Mozart plus sacrilege"?

21 Which music video/ film director (b.1953) from Catterick, North Yorks, has directed over 500 music videos, including Do They Know It's Christmas, Sweet Child o' Mine, Everybody Wants to Rule the World, Wonderwall, Oops! ... I Did It Again, Believe (by Cher) and, of course, TATTVA?

23 Named after a roadstead in Virginia, which March 8-9, 1862 clash was the most noted naval battle of the US Civil War?

24 Which 1938 play, set during the Spanish Civil War, is the only such full-length work by Ernest Hemingway?

25 In 1914, Sybil Brinton published Old Friends and New Fancies, the first work of fan fiction related to which writer?

26 During World War Two, the criminals Henri Lafont and Pierre Loutrel led which group, known as the "French Gestapo"?

27 Which item links TV roles played by Joe Manganiello (in The Pacific) and David Rasche (headlining his own show) with a Peter Gabriel song?

28 Rio's Estadio Sao Januario (capacity 25,000), a historic venue that was used many times by Getulio Vargas for his public speeches, is the home of which football club?

29 Known for discovering the peregrine falcon, which English ornithologist wrote Ornithologica Britannica (1771), probably the first British work to use binomial nomenclature?

30 In 1946, which Dane became the first woman to win the Palme d'Or for directing the film The Red Meadows?

31 Which chieftain of the Senones led the Cisalpine Gauls that sacked Rome in 387 BC - the only time the city was occupied by a non-Roman army before the fall of the city to the Goths in 410 AD?

32 Which 2001-2010 manga series by Hiromu Arakawa is about brothers Edward and Alphonse Elric searching for the Philosopher's Stone to restore their bodies after a failed attempt to bring back their mum?

33 Celine Dion's album D'eux (1994) became the best-selling French-language album of all time. Which French musician wrote most of the album, including Je sais pas and his duet with Dion, J'irai ou tu iras?

34 Rolf Hochhuth's Pope/Holocauts play The Deputy (1963) was adapted into which 2002 Costa-Gavras film?

35 Born near Zhytomyr (present-day Ukraine), which Soviet pianist (1915-97) famously did not play Bach's Goldberg Variations?

36 Who started fighting as a professional boxer in July 1948, winning a fight against Harry Bilizarian and going on to win his first 16 bouts by KO?

37 Which Cartoon Network show featured a titular pink beagle who lives with his elderly owners Muriel and Eustace Bagge in the town of Nowhere and constantly has to fend off supernatural threats?

38 When Gene Roddenberry brought back Star Trek as The Animated Series, he couldn't afford to hire every main cast member of the original series, meaning that which vital character/actor was missing from the series?

39 Live by Night is which US crime writer's epic follow-on to The Given Day - Joe Coughlin changes from small time thief to big time outlaw in 1920s Boston?

40 In The Simpsons, Comic Book Guy is the proprietor of which comic book store?

41 Mark Twain described which member of the genus Annona as "the most delicious fruit known to men"?

42 In 1899, which German physicist proposed a set of units of measurement based on only the properties of free space?

43 Dubbed "the Johannes Kepler of Optics", which Scottish physicist's contributions to the field of optics included studying the double refraction by compression and his discovery of the photoelastic effect? He also invented the "lenticular stereoscope" - the first portable 3D viewing device, the binocular camera, two types of polarimeter, the polyzonal lens and the lighthouse illuminator.

44 The Altarpiece of the Redeemer (1354-57) in the Strozzi di Mantova chapel at Santa Maria Novella, Florence; the Orsanmichele tabernacle (finished 1359) described as "the most perfect work of its kind in Italian Gothic" and (an attribution at least since he has become Master of the Works in 1359) the mosaic decoration and the rose window of Orvieto Cathedral are works by which 14th century Italian painter, sculptor and architect?

45 The President's Hat (his Francois Mitterrand-themed 2012 debut), The Red Notebook, and French Rhapsody are works by which novelist, journalist, screenwriter and collector of antique keys, born in Paris in the early 1970s?

46 Which Lieutenant of the Tower (1513-20) was fictionalised as a character in Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Yeomen of the Guard?

47 Known for such albums as Levekisha, Nouvelle Attitude and Obomiyia (featuring the song La Connaissance), the Gabonese singer Patience Dabany, aka Marie Josephine Kama, served as First Lady of Gabon from 1967 to 1988 as wife of which president?

48 The metafictional novel Blood and Guts in High School, written in the late 1970s and published 1984, about Janey Smith who dies of cancer like her creator, remains which late US writer's most popular book?

49 Nicknamed "Bobo" (and "The Hawaiian Swede"), which US boxer's reign as world middleweight boxing champion Oct 1953 - Dec 1955 was the longest reign of any champion in that division during the 1950s?

50 So who be spitting deez sick rhymzzzz: "Number one rap innovator / Tell them haters see you later", "When I was just a little girl growing up in Weezy / Listening to Snoop Dogg, Dre and Yeezy" and "I'm big in the game, so big in the game / Now I've got the whole world saying my name"*?

Z

O

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ANSWERS TO BH167

1 Antonio Jose de Sucre

2 Men in Black

3 C.M. Punk

4 Otfried or Otfrid of Weissenburg

5 Arno Schmidt

6 Catterino Cavos

7 Ernest Cline

8 Armando Bo

9 Roger II

10 Erik Spiekermann

11 Igor Belanov

12 Sangiovese

13 Adding the letter p after each vowel of a word, and repeating the vowel

14 Lorenzo Bernardi

15 Midlothian Campaign - named from the constituency where he successfully stood in the 1880 election

16 Raises the average value of both sets - Roger supposedly said: "When the Okies left Oklahoma and moved to California, they raised the average intelligence level in both states"

17 Pantofola d'Oro

18 Juan Gabriel

19 Mafia III

20 Waldo de los Rios

21 Nigel Dick

22 Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood

23 Battle of Hampton Roads

24 The Fifth Column

25 Jane Austen

26 The Carlingue

27 Sledgehammer

28 Vasco da Gama

29 Marmaduke Tunstall

30 Bodil Ipsen

31 Brennus

32 Fullmetal Alchemist

33 Jean-Jacques Goldman

34 Amen

35 Sviatoslav Richter

36 Rocky Marciano

37 Courage the Cowardly Dog

38 Pavel Chekov/Walter Koenig

39 Dennis Lehane

40 The Android's Dungeon & Baseball Card Shop

41 Cherimoya (Annona cherimola)

42 Max Planck - Planck units or natural units are defined exclusively in terms of five universal physical constants, including the speed of light in a vacuum, c

43 Sir David Brewster - this discovery gave birth to the field of optical mineralogy

44 Orcagna aka Andrea di Cione di Arcangelo

45 Antoine Laurain

46 Sir Richard Cholmondeley

47 Omar Bongo Ondimba

48 Kathy Acker

49 Carl Olson or Bobo Olson

50 Honey G

*A vision has come to me. I see, I see a stage at Reading Festival and a bottle-of-piss bombardment so devastating, so uriney, so pummelicious that Miss G will still be shrieking and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder when she starts drawing her pension

Saturday, November 12, 2016

The Horror! (BUY MY QUIZ BOOK)

Haven't you heard? Every copy of The Times Quiz Book that goes unsold, a particularly cute sea otter will spontaneously explode in a pfft of viscera and fur. Imagine the spatter. All that blood and goo guts. Dripping. Splatting. Won't someone think of the sweet little sweet otters? As they backstroke into the oblivion of extinction ("Awww ... so schweeeeeet")?

Cannibal Holocaust. Braindead. Sam Peckinpah's Salad Days. Care Bears: The Giving Festival Movie. The Otter-pocalypse will unleash more gore than all of those spurty bloodbaths combined and multiplied by ... quintillion!

About the Book

About the TIMES QUIZ BOOK

Do you have the general knowledge to match double world quiz champion Olav Bjortomt? More than 200 challenging quizzes from the MindGames section of The Times to test your general knowledge to the limit. With over 4000 questions, set the pace as quiz master for your friends, colleagues and family, or pit yourself against Olav in a battle of wits.

Subject areas include Geography, Music, the Arts, Film, Literature, Sport, Politics, Science, History and Wildlife, with each quiz offering a final teaser picture question. Enough questions to scramble even an egghead’s brains.

BOOM!

REMEMBER WHAT IS AT STAKE, IF YOU DON'T VISIT THE AMAZON REET NOW, SAH!
And the otter-plosions will happen. With absolute certainty. If I believe it, it will be so. Even if the evidence doesn't bear this out. Evidence no doubt proffered by the "experts". Don't you know? We live in a post-expert era. Rank amateurism is the path forward. Deploying naive intuition pickled in our gut feelings and driven by our own personal notion of whatever the frack common sense is is how we get shit done. It's all about the feels. And reinforcing those feels with what we like hearing. Competing opinions and novel viewpoints can only slow us down and impede our journey to the glory that is a future that looks much like our past. A glorious past where everybody was happy, everyone was winning and no one was whining and we kicked major ass, beautifully! And that ass got kicked. So kicked, so kicked it went to sleep. But now it's waking up. Everywhere!

Shouldn't that ass be kicked again? Just because. Kicking ass is the cure for our ills.

We can all create our own reality; a beautiful reality - it will be great. The best! We're gonna have so much beautiful reality for ourselves. Bigly. And big league. Wishful thinking for all! Hurrah! That's what these increasingly "interesting times" have taught me. And if it doesn't happen, I can deny I ever made such a prognostication, even if I leave this statement right here. The audacity of such brazenness is very much en vogue. Thrilling subversion. The reckoning? What reckoning? We won't ignore the warning signs, even they've become actual events that happen to be smashing us over the head with a sledgehammer.

But of course, that's no gorram way to set, run or do a quiz. Quizzes must hold steadfast in the face of the Now. Take a stand. Hold fast. I'm Spartacus and so's my wife!

And buy a book to prove your allegiance to quiz, your loyalty to the tenets of verifiable questions. Pay homage to facts in quiz question form. Not facts delivered by the churning mouths of grey men on TV. Those facts suck major ballsack. Facts that are interchangeable with lies. Who can tell the difference? We can. We got the truth, so truthy, it's scorching a hole inside us, in our hearts, soul and brains, and no, that's not me having a stroke. Though there's a bit of a burning sensation on the underside of my nutbag. So once again, we return to balls.

Balls. Something stirreth. Yes. I am talking a load of balls. Who knows what I just said? I don't believe it. I forgot. I'm telling myself "Wrong". These words above me are obviously lies concocted by the MSM. A hacker got in there, somewhere, who knows how these things happen? Who knows how anything happens?

And yet, we can all put our faith in quiz questions. Particularly the ones below. If you need a fix right now...

*** And I've always thought: if Vinnie Jones can get a major part in a Hollywood movie (frickin' HOLLYWOOD!), can consort with the McKellen, the Picard and Hugh Sideburns and be allowed to say dialogue like THAT, then you and I and everyone we know can achieve anything. Anything. His casting in X-Men 3 - by Matthew Vaughn, stretched, broke and smashed the oh-so-human limits of possibility (Vaughn of all people: a man of supreme taste and judgement; a man who is married to Claudia Schiffer. That's Claudia Schiffer! And his marrying that German Aphrodite; another act that snapped the constraints of real-life credulity, when one considers the physical dimensions of such a couple). So when they tell you don't bother, don't even bother to dream, you say: "If Vinnie Jones can play Juggernaut in an X-Men film when his mate has upped and left to Kick-Ass and left you without the comfort of nepotism, but with a git like Brett Ratner, then surely I can one day walk on the red iron sands of Mars. Surely your next door neighbour can cure HIV and cancer in his shed, just because he's the biggest fan of both Casualty and The A-Team that you've ever met. So it goes."

BH166: My appeal to you and thee and ye and thou

1 Who sang the first line of Do They Know It's Christmas? in a) 1984 b) 1989 c) 2004 d) 2014?

2 Which Italian distiller (1764-1815), a native of Turin, invented Vermouth and consequently the aperitif?

3 A bestseller in France, a graphic novel by sexologist Philippe Brenot and artist Laetitia Coryn tells which story FromApes to Robots?

4 Who was the French composer (1791-1833) of the opera Zampa and the ballet La fille mal gardée or The Wayward Daughter?

5 Fabien is an airmail pilot of the Patagonia Mail in which 1931 work, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's second novel?

6 Which Soviet naval officer (1904-74) achieved the rank of Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union and served as People's Commissar of the Navy during WW2 - a Russian aircraft carrier, launched in 1985, was named in his honour? In 1941, he ordered the creation, near Leningrad, of a special forces company RON, the first Soviet underwater special force.

7 Australia's leading commercial dramatist, who wrote the plays Don's Party, The Removalists and The Club?

8 Which term - chakameh in Turkish - is an ancient Arabic word and form of writing poetry (that typically runs from 15 to 80 lines, and sometimes more than a 100), often translated as ode, passed to other cultures after the Arab Muslim expansion? Notable examples include the ______ Burda ('Poem of the Mantle') by Imam al-Busiri and Ibn Arabi's collection The Interpreter of Desires.

9 Best known for her novel Marianne Dreams, which English writer's series about a wolf ineptly pursuing a young girl, began with Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf?

10 Mark Twain went broke, losing nearly $5m in today's money, on investing in a mechanical typesetting machine that would have revolutionized printing if it had worked. However, he remained friends with the inventor. His name?

11 Which pope authorized the 1456 inquisitorial court that examined Joan of Arc's trial and declared her innocent?

12 Which Bishop of Reims and Apostle of the Franks baptised Clovis I, king of the Franks on December 25, 496? This baptism, leading to the conversion of the entire Frankish people to Catholic Christianity, was a momentous success for the Church and a seminal event in European history.

13 The title of which 1955 Norman Mailer novel (his second) refers to the Parc-aux-Cerfs, a resort Louis XV kept stocked with young women for his personal pleasure?

14 Isaac Hayes and David Porter spontaneously came up with the title of which 1966 song - a hit for Sam & Dave - when Hayes was trying to get Porter to hurry out of the Stax Studios restroom and get back to work?

15 Which branch of classical mechanics describes the motion of points, bodies (objects) and systems of bodies without consideration of the masses of those objects nor the forces that may have caused the motion?

16 Which French actress plays a vengeful rape victim named Michele in the new Paul Verhoeven film Elle (based on the novel by Philippe Djian?

17 Inspiring Mr. Brocklehurst, the headmaster of Lowood School in Jane Eyre, which English churchman (1791-1859) founded the long-lived monthly The Children's Friend?

18 Created by Stan Cross in 1920 as You & Me, which Australian comic strip was taken over by Jim Russell who ran it for world record 62 years?

19 In which 1928 play by Nikolai Erdman does Semyon, a young, unemployed man fail at learning the tuba, forcing him to take drastic actions?

20 Though convicted and hanged for only one murder, which killer nurse (1837-96), known as "The Reading Baby Farmer", may have murdered as many as 400 infants?

21 Opened to traffic in 1932, the French King Bridge crosses which river, the longest in New England, in Massachusetts?

22 Which American tennis player, whose career high-ranking was 39 in 2003, was the first professional tennis player to appear in Playboy?

23 Known for a series of novels set in the fictional East European country of Graustark (capital city Edelweiss), who wrote the 1902 novel Brewster's Millions (that has been adapted many times, including the Richard Pryor version)?

24 Which WW2 Japanese general, after whom US rules in regards to command responsibility for war crimes were named (the _______ Standard), was nicknamed "The Tiger of Malaya", and was hanged for war crimes pertaining to his soldiers' conduct in the Philippines?

25 Who was a) the father of and b) the wife of Piast the Wheelwright, aka Piast Kolodziej, the semi-legendary 9th century Polish figure who founded the Piast dynasty that would rule the future Kingdom of Poland?

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Um. This is so difficult. Been too long. So much that should have been said/posted.

Now there's a void. Ice and silence and absence. I got nothing: diddly squat nada. REE-EN.

Well, apart from this friendly I forgot to post last year. The score was 48-52. Or 52-48.

So enjoy. I'm outta here - wait, friendly, what a coincidence! I've got a "family friendly" quiz book to finish. Right now. GRRRR. I am also fine-tuning an array of cutting remarks in readiness for combat with the inevitable hordes (bovine masses) of The Deceived on Amazon e.g. (first, there's me Will Grahaming it) "What kind of insane family would find these questions enjoyable? Impossibly hard. Had to return it" Me: Oh you did not write that. YOU ABSOLUTE, MASSIVE, THROBBING, PUTAIN DE SPAM-HANDLER DOUCHENOZZLE! - Je sais. Wildean wit at its most sublime.

So fare thee well. Er, see you next year?

November Some Time? Maybe Early December. Back in Twenty Fifteen

R1

1 Nicknamed "The Squire", which US golfer completed the career Grand Slam when he won the Masters in 1935?

Gene Sarazen

2 In 1714, which German physicist built the first thermometer to contain mercury as a thermo-metric medium?

Daniel Fahrenheit

3 Which US author's L.A. Quartet includes The Black Dahlia (1987) and The Big Nowhere (1988)?

James Ellroy

4 Which co-founder of the London Marathon was steeplechase champion at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics?

Chris Brasher

5 Presented to Queen Victoria in 1850, which diamond is set in the platinum crown made for the late Queen Mother for the 1937 coronation?

Koh-i-Noor

6 Which cathedral in Ghent houses The Ghent Altarpiece by Jan and Hubert van Eyck?

St. Bavo's Cathedral

7 Which Jewish festival of Shavuot takes place seven weeks (50 days) after which festival's first day?

8 In 2012, what became the first ever British-Asian sitcom on the BBC?

Citizen Khan

R2

1 Which legendary creatures appeared in five faked photographs taken by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths?

Cottingley Fairies

2 The Russian-born Swiss billionaire businesswoman Margarita Louis-Dreyfus owns which French football club?

3 A deathbed scene featuring the AIDS activist David Kirby was used in a controversial ad for fashion company?

Benetton

4 The Trendelenburg test is used to determine the competency of the valves in the superficial and deep veins of patients with what condition?

5 Starring Conrad Veidt as Prince Metternich, the German comedy film The Congress Dances (1932) is set at which historical event?

1815 Congress of Vienna

6 Instead of barking, which breed of African wolf dog produces an unusual yodel-like sound known as a "baroo"?

Basenji

7 Which chemical element, symbol Fl, is named after the Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia?

Flerovium

8 Which New York City borough is the title of a 2009 novel by Colm Toibin?

Brooklyn

R3

1 Pope Damasus commissioned which man in 382 to make a revision of the old Latin Bible translations?

St. Jerome (Vulgate)

2 What name links a number one single for Brotherhood of Man and the judge who is the villain of Shakespeare's play Measure for Measure?

Angelo

3 Which bay colt was foaled on May 23, 1933, from the mare Swing On and sired by Hard Tack, son of Man o' War?

Seabiscuit

4 Which two types of quark have the lowest masses of all quarks?

Up and down

5 Which sailor married the Sky Sports presenter Georgie Thompson in December 2014?

Ben Ainslie

6 Mercury City Tower, Eurasia Tower, and City of Capitals are among the tallest skyscrapers in which capital city?

7 Which car company makes the Octavia, Fabia and Superb?

Skoda

8 King's Oak, a village on Birmingham's outskirts, was the originally setting for which TV soap?

Crossroads

R4

1 Which heavy metal band released the 1983 debut album Kill 'Em All?

Metallica

2 Which English footballer's son became the Wimbledon Boys Champion in 1962?

Sir Stanley Matthews, father of Stanley Matthews, who was until Andy Murray, the last British male to win a singles tournament at Wimbledon

3 Ranginui and Papatuanuku are the sky father and earth mother in which people's mythology?

2 Played in the Thor films by Renee Russo, where Marvel Comics have added an A to her Old Norse name, which goddess is described in nearly all mythical sources as the wife of Odin?

Frigg

3 Which Russian composer, who taught Shostakovich, wrote the music for the ballets, Les ruses d'amour,Raymonda and Stenka Razin?

Aleksandr Glazunov

4 In 2009, actress Sophie Winkleman married which son of Prince Michael of Kent?

Lord Frederick Windsor

5 Nicknamed the "Junk Bond King", which American investor was head of the high-yield bond department at Drexel Burnham Lambert in the late 1980s, when his earnings exceeded $1bn in a four-year period, a record for US income at the time?

Michael Milken

6 Which French cathedral, famed for its 142m-tall tower, was described by Victor Hugo as a "gigantic and delicate marvel", by Paul Claudel as a "pinky-red angel hovering over the city" and by Goethe as "the most sublime, word-spreading tree of God"?

7 The Cuban pitcher Aroldis Chapman broke which MLB record on July 11, 2014?

Fastest recorded pitch speed in MLB history at 105 mph or 169 km/h

8 Sherry and beaten egg was the preferred Budget tipple of which Victorian-era Chancellor?

William Gladstone

R7

1 The name of which dish means 'fried rice' in Indonesian and Malay, and has been called the national dish of Indonesia?

Nasi goreng

2 The UK's number one Cabernet Sauvignon, Casillero del Diablo is made in which South American country?

Chile

3 Stonewall Jackson earned his famous nickname at which July 21, 1861 battle?

1st Battle of Bull Run or First Manassas

4 Which heavyweight champion was knocked out by Jess Willard in Cuba in 1915?

Jack Johnson

5 Mandeville is the capital of the Parish of Manchester on which Caribbean island?

Jamaica

6 Which Danish king was succeeded by his son Sweyn Forkbeard in around 986?

Harald Bluetooth

7 Churchill described which November 20, 1947 event as "a brief flash of colour on the weary road we have to travel"?

The wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Philip Mountbatten, Duke of Edinburgh

8 The French bartender Fernand Petiot claimed that he invented which vodka-based cocktail in the early 1920s?

Wednesday, November 04, 2015

BH165: The Pre-EQCing

Just, you know, putting them out there... (if you want to have a look at a quiz before the Euros that might make you feel stupid, dim-witted and ignorant of all the world contains, hey, you're welcome!)

BOO-YA!

1 Which German "City of Blades" is renowned for the manufacture of swords, knives, razors and scissors by such firms as DOVO, Wüsthof, J.A. Henckels and Böker?

2 In 1817, Jeremiah Brandreth "The Nottingham Captain" became one of the last people to be beheaded with an axe in Britain for leading which uprising?

3 Londonderry Island at the western end of the Beagle Channel was named by which ship captain and descendant of the Marquis of Londonderry?

4 Which Minister-President of the Austrian Empire, from 1848 to 1852, restored the Habsburg Empire as a European great power following the Revolutions of 1848?

5 Which creator of Scrooge McDuck was called "the Hans Christian Andersen of comic books" by cartoonist Will Eisner?

6 Who created the visionary environment known as Salvation Mountain in the Colorado Desert in California?

7 Which jockey rode the last two Kentucky Derby winners, American Pharaoh and California Chrome?

8 What is the only football club to win four Copa Libertadores finals in a row, between 1972 and 1975?

9 Which Chairman of the Federation Council since 2011 is considered the highest-ranking female politician in Russia?

10 Which French singer rose to prominence in the early 1980s with hit songs like Gaby oh Gaby and Vertige l'amour?

11 The USSR wanted to name Rutherfordium, element 104, after which father of the Soviet nuclear bomb?

12 The title of which band's 1969 debut LP Pickin' Up the Pieces refers to the break-up of Buffalo Springfield?

13 Which conglomerate, founded in 1948 by Shin Kyuk-ho, is named after a character in The Sorrows of Young Werther?

14 Killed in a 1981 road accident, which motorcycle legend's pall bearers included James Hunt, John Surtees and Giacomo Agostini?

15 Which Dutchman's most famous portrait is his 1642 half-length portrayal of Gerard Andriesz Bicker, the rather plump son of Andries Bicker, the mayor of Amsterdam?

16 Entering service in 1956, which short-range AAM is the most widely used missile in the West?

17 Nicknamed "The General", which US TV pioneer is credited with an eponymous law that states the value of a broadcast network is proportional to the number of viewers?

18 In 2008, who became the first French act singing in English to top the French album chart, with A Mouthful?

19 Founded in Osaka in 1947, which Japanese football team began as the club of Sumitomo Metal Industries?

20 What is Australia's Thunder from Down Under?

21 In 1535, Angela Merici and 28 companions founded the Company of which female saint, whose martyrdom Hans Memling depicted on a shrine?

About Me

I was a twentysomething long gripped in the claws of an unnatural interest in quizzes that has taken me to such exotic locales as Milton Keynes, the Granada Studios canteen and Tallinn, the very wet capital of Estonia when I started this blog. Now I am 30-years-old.